I’ve been thinking about perceptions and perspectives quite a bit recently, as I alluded to in my last blog post, questions about what’s going on in our world, near and far, how we look at it, how/can it be better.
In a nutshell, I’m guessing a lot of you - regardless perhaps of political ilk - are seeing it as I am apt to: our world is, to put it bluntly, a shitshow, a devolving and degrading miasma of bad news followed by worse, then by awful. Flames and floods, shootings and chauvinisms, brutal tribalism and blatant treachery rule the day. Things look bleak.
Or at least they seem to.
But maybe they aren’t.
Deep in mental meanderings, I revisited the snippets of physics I could digest, those bits from the edges of comprehension, the fuzzy frontiers of the quantum realm, pointing toward a dichotomous ontology, a contradictory reality. Let me (try to) explain:
In the subatomic realm, the land of funny fragments of the physical world like photons and quarks, the world of what is quickly becomes the world of what might be, what could be, what is and what isn’t, simultaneously. The classic example is that of the double-slit experiment wherein a photon, electron, or similar is “fired” at a screen with two slits in it. Simple logic tells us the photon should go through the left or right slit, one or the other. When observed, when measured, that is indeed the case. But when left uninterfered, the photon goes not through one or the other slit, but through both simultaneously.
To break it down in gross laymen’s terms (which are the only ones I can comprehend), a photon (or electron and others) are not simply particles with measurable, definable positions and momentums, but also exist as a waveform with undefinable position and momentum. A photon exists as a waveform until measured, acted upon, at which point it “becomes” a particle…and hence the double-slit experiment: the photon goes through both slits as a waveform when no one is watching, but that waveform collapses once measured, once seen, shifting photon-wave to photon-particle and forcing it through the left or right slit, but not both. As Physics World put it: Reality itself seems to shift with the act of looking.1
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
- Max Planck -
So what of it? Does quantum weirdness make helpful suggestions about our world, our lives, our current and future reality? I think it does. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to delve into some cultish pseudoscience as peddled by the likes of J.Z. Knight, suggesting we can alter the world with our brains, time travel, or channel the 35,000 year old Ramtha.)
We all know how our perception of, well, anything has a great effect on our mood and attitude toward that thing. Go into the office with dread, and the day will likely be…dreadful. Change the mindset to see beauty in the same task, opportunity, even just admiration of the sunrise on the drive in, and suddenly that same office day is quite a bit different.
Like the photon, that day in the office begins as a waveform, neither good nor bad, but both at once. We bring to it the interaction, the perspective, that collapses waveform to particle and forces it through one of two slits: left or right, good or bad, positive or negative. The choice is not random - it is ours.
And, the metaphor perhaps goes further. Another mindboggling aspect of quantum mechanics is entanglement: Our friendly photon who changes form once measured? Well, it may have an entangled friend, a twin you might say, who could conceivably be on the opposite side of the universe. But, such is the bond of entanglement that acting on one - collapsing its waveform and forcing it through a slit - will, instantaneously, illicit the identical reaction in its entangled twin.
Haven’t we all experienced similar social entanglement whereby the attitude of one - positive or negative - spawns an equal reaction in others, which then propagates outward to the whole? (I’ve been guilty of being the negative entangled twin many times.) And what about being mired in the middle, stuck in the waveform, neither good nor bad, but the dismal grey of (n)either? Again, a spreading entanglement, a contagion.
No, social systems are not quantum ones, nor are we quantum objects (although we’re comprised of these mystical bits, so who knows), but the analogy is there to be learned from. So much so that there’s a growing field of quantum social science, and renowned quantum physicist David Bohm put it thus in a 1977 lecture at UC Berkeley:
Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.
- David Bohm
So, what’s the point?
We humans, we people, we ambulatory, conscious photons whizzing through the vacuous chasm of existence have two slits in front of us. Our very consciousness is the tool of measurement, of observation, of collapsing our waveform and forcing us to go through not both, but one or the other slit: left or right, good or bad, positive or negative.
Quantum social science tells us that in a participatory, entangled world, our deepest values and intentions are potential sources of individual change, collective change, and systems change. A participatory universe is full of potential, and our smallest discrete choices and actions shape what happens next. They create ripples and resonance, influencing the whole.
- Karen O'Brien -
Seek beauty. Find grace and grit and gratitude. Live with compassion and empathy. Let your newly kindled light shine on and entangle others.
Will it change the world, end the suffering, snuff the hatred, douse the flames?
No, but it will make a dent, take the edge off, lower the guards, and help enable you, me, us all to conjure the energy to keep fighting for what is right.
